That would result in the problem that gear from old content will be too similar to new content. We already had that problem during Vanilla with seval sets with a very good set bonus. They had to nerf them so people would stop wearing them 2 raids later.

Procs are budgeted the same way stat sticks are. If there's a "godly proc", it means they messed up.

I mean, sure, they could come back and do a repeat of the Dragonspine Trophy where the trinket is horribly over budget and then ignore it for a whole expansion, but they've been better about that recently (see: Rune of Re-Origination vs WW Monks)

What is out of control? Are your axe swings causing rifts in the space-time continuum or something? That is a quote almost straight out of a developer's mouth; one that makes no sense whatsoever. In the same way that a tank with a million health points will perform the same after the squish, a non-squished tank will perform the same without it.

There was no need for the squish. It's just part of a witch-hunt from Blizzard to find things that make the game "hard to get into." The same hunt that has resulted, throughout all these recent years in the game turning into a battle-arena one and losing its role-playing feel. Dumbing down elements all across the board because they are "too much intellectually to handle for that elusive new player." As if people in the past that had little problem understanding the mechanics of the game, just more patience, are a now-extinct breed.

The squish was in no way necessary; "out of control" is a non-excuse; it's done for aesthetic and client-chasing purposes, while treating the players already paying like they don't exist, their opposition being "dully noted and discarded;" almost nobody even thought about this as a problem until Ghostcrawler mentioned it, the most relevant thing that was heard was how awesome it was for feral druids slowly reaching 1 million health points in bear form; such an immense problem our tank couldn't sleep at night at times...

What is out of control? Are your axe swings causing rifts in the space-time continuum or something? That is a quote almost straight out of a developer's mouth; one that makes no sense whatsoever. In the same way that a tank with a million health points will perform the same after the squish, a non-squished tank will perform the same without it.

There was no need for the squish. It's just part of a witch-hunt from Blizzard to find things that make the game "hard to get into." The same hunt that has resulted, throughout all these recent years in the game turning into a battle-arena one and losing its role-playing feel. Dumbing down elements all across the board because they are "too much intellectually to handle for that elusive new player." As if people in the past that had little problem understanding the mechanics of the game, just more patience, are a now-extinct breed.

The squish was in no way necessary; "out of control" is a non-excuse; it's done for aesthetic and client-chasing purposes, while treating the players already paying like they don't exist, their opposition being "dully noted and discarded;" almost nobody even thought about this as a problem until Ghostcrawler mentioned it, the most relevant thing that was heard was how awesome it was for feral druids slowly reaching 1 million health points in bear form; such an immense problem our tank couldn't sleep at night at times...

I honestly really hated the stats and damage jumps with every expansion. It just didn't feel right to crit for hundreds of thousands (some classes for millions already) of damage. I'm very glad they're finally putting an (temporary) end to this.

doesnt look awesome to me.. looks like they just erased 6 years of progress.. for all intended purposes you can say that your character gained NO power in the last 6 years.. Wrath, Cata, Panda ... you just had all that progress your character made.. null and voided. welcome to the biggest nerf in the history of the game. and before the i kill it in 5 seconds like i did before the squish crowd.. i had no problems killing in the same time frame as now as when i was in BC either.

Ill take the squish and get over it.. but i expect to see the biggest mass exit yet when the overwhelmingly large DPS crowd gets the news.

You just need to get used to the new numbers. Once you are, you will quite likely not feel nerfed anymore.

the numbers are meaningless, as long as the ratio is the same between player damage and mob health, your relative "power" is unchanged. its needed, actually it should never have gotten this bad in the first place.

before cata each xpac pretty much saw everything double, and then it just got stupid

I don't think it's fair to be dismissive of the "I'll feel weaker" argument. Yes, in relative terms things are staying the same (and I actually think that when the squish philosophy doesn't match up to reality, they'll err on the side of caution and make Vanilla stuff even easier to solo than it is now, via the zone buffs they've talked about), but in absolute terms we will be doing less.

Lots of folks are offering a multitude of arguments, but Blizz has presented only one argument in favor of the squish: that for now it's a better cost/benefit ratio to doing the squish (which was actually done pre-MoP, just not implemented) than for fixing their underlying code to support larger numbers.

That's it. Their system can't support numbers larger than we saw for boss health in MoP (Ra-Den 25 being the most visible example), and there's not enough time to fix the coding right now. Considering they've said exponential power growth within a single xpac is still necessary, it's only a matter of maybe 2 more xpacs before we're back where we are right now before the squish.

Either they'll do a re-squish every 2/3 xpacs (and even then it can only happen so much before even squished we're at MoP levels), or they'll have to eventually fix the underlying code, and then the other arguments simply are not even the least bit valid anymore, and the folks who aesthetically prefer the smaller numbers will be in the same boat as the folks who aesthetically prefer the larger numbers -- without Blizz, effectively even if not really, on their side.

I do have a feeling it is their intent to fix the underlying code, but really a lot of that depends on how long they see the game lasting for. If it's only going to be kicking for between, say, 4-6 more xpacs after WoD, they can just do another couple squishes and that's probably ultimately the smarter option. Beyond that, tho, and all the squish creeps from "better option" to "why didn't we just fix the code in the first place instead of doing all that squish work".

I'd wager that since its outdated irrevelant content, the power jump will be significantly reduced.

I realize it's very niche audiences, but I wonder what this means for folks who want to try to progress through older raids with frozen characters at proper level (even if spec/talent/gear/etc changes more than outweigh being at the original proper level) ... although, yeah, I guess with all the changes they probably could already do the final tiers in a given previous level cap, in the entry level gear for that level.

Although considering how weak my alts are when they step foot in Pandaria (and even after buying pick-up gear), I can't imagine having an easier time in Dragon Soul with a raid of 10 fresh 85s than with Firelands-geared 85s when we originally did it ...

I think something that adds confusion to this topic is that there are 2 different aspects that are thrown together. Scaling and changing the progression curve are very different. Due to scaling, I can still kill a mob at the same level in the same amount of time. Where things get fuzzy is the additional tinkering of the progression curve, which Blizzard posted 3 days ago. They are basically chopping off much of the exponential growth to continue a previous linear trend. What that SHOULD mean (If the graph means anything practically) is that at 90, I do less damage RELATIVE to a 60 mob than I did before. If this is not the case, they are adding in some fuzzy math there and the graphs they posted a few days ago are mostly meaningless. Face it, it should take large exponential growth in ability for a single 90 to do as much damage as 25 60's. Their changed curve certainly does not reflect this.

In my opinion, they should keep the crazy exponential curve for PVE and switch to linear for PvP. The numbers will still be scaled down, it's just the relative difference between levels that gets impacted.

This is essentially true, but not entirely. They are not adding in a coefficient to all damage calculations and calling it a day, they are squishing everything differently.

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Originally Posted by Narolan

I think something that adds confusion to this topic is that there are 2 different aspects that are thrown together. Scaling and changing the progression curve are very different. Due to scaling, I can still kill a mob at the same level in the same amount of time. Where things get fuzzy is the additional tinkering of the progression curve. They are basically chopping off much of the exponential growth to continue a previous linear trend. What that SHOULD mean (If the graph means anything practically) is that at 90, I do less damage RELATIVE to a 60 mob than I did before. If this is not the case, they are adding in some fuzzy math there and the graphs they posted are mostly meaningless. Face it, it should take large exponential growth in ability for a single 90 to do as much damage as 25 60's. Their changed curve certainly does not reflect this.

This is what a lot of people are missing.

They are not simply adding in a x.125 calculation to everything and saying done. They are also smoothing the general rate of scaling, so they claim, but the graph clearly shows an abnormal jump in WoD, which means they are not taking into consideration going forward if it continues at such a rate, except now starting at like 70k health, we will be entering the next expansion at the health between LK and Cata, but still have high scaling.

And in addition, they are having so many different difficulties of gear, and still plan on keeping everything 10 item levels apart. 3 tiers of raiding and we end up with a 120 ilvl jump, +dungeons and leveling content.